2018 in Review

Happy New Year! 2018 was a big year for HIFIS 4, and for us at ACRE Consulting, too! We thought you might enjoy a look back with us at the year that was…

New HIFIS 4 Communities

At least 8 communities launched HIFIS 4 in 2018 – that we know of. (Update: 9 communities.) Welcome aboard, to all you newcomers! This is really exciting news. The more communities that switch to HIFIS 4, the more we can all support and learn from each other, and the more ESDC learns there’s demand for it, and the more resources they can justify devoting to its development. Let us know if I missed any, or if the dates are wrong (or if you’d rather not be listed)!

HIFIS 4 Features

2018 also brought some new features to HIFIS 4. Notably, the Point in Time Count module was created and implemented as many communities used HIFIS 4 for the first federal PIT Count.

Another module that was added in that may have slipped under the radar for some was the Housing Loss Prevention module. This is designed for staff doing eviction preventions or similar work.

Our Clients

We did work directly with 13 different communities in 2018, and indirectly with many more (through our work on the 20K Homes Campaign). Thank you all for your business and your positive words! We love hearing from a community that one of you was saying nice things about us! In fact, 100% of our business is based on word of mouth, so believe us when we say we wouldn’t be here if you guys didn’t like us. So you keep saying nice things about us and we’ll keep putting out materials like our blog posts, and keep sharing our reports when we’re done them!

Blog Posts

Speaking of blog posts, turns out, you folks seem to like our blog posts. On average, each of our articles gets read about 25 times, which isn’t bad considering how small our target audience is! Our top 5 blog posts in 2018, in case you missed them, were:

Reports

It was a busy year for report writing at ACRE Consulting! While it’s really hard to tell how many reports we actually wrote, many of our clients are happy to share the reports they’ve commissioned on our website. In 2018, we published 22 such reports, and trust us when we say there’s plenty more in the works.

Coming Up Next…

2019 is going to be a big year! Not only are we currently working with a number of communities to help launch HIFIS 4, we are also a part of the HIFIS Working Group. Right now, we’re working with ESDC on a By-Name List and prioritization function for HIFIS 4. So exciting!

We are also considering what additional areas we can expand into to provide additional support to communities. We’re experimenting with online courses and considering offering webinars to help communities with their training needs. If you’re interested, please feel free to reach out and contact us and we can discuss what would work for your community.

We also already offer HIFIS documentation and user manuals, and are thinking about publishing some actual HIFIS books. Is there demand for such things? We don’t know! Please let us know if you would be interested.